For most of my adultish life, I’ve been a last-minute gift-giver. Once I was so wrapped up in college and travel that I completely spaced on ordering presents for my parents. My brilliant solution was to hop online on Christmas eve, click “add to cart” on a couple hastily-chosen items, and print out pictures of the gifts they would soon receive in the mail. I didn’t feel quite so proud of myself when I handed them each a piece of paper in a plain envelope on Christmas morning.
This year I finally got it together, gift-wise, but I know that there are tons of busy (or lazy) folks out there who are still on the hunt. For you, I’ve posted this last-minute gift guide.
Everything on this list can be ordered with 2-day or overnight shipping, and should make it on time if you order by December 21 (or, in some cases, the 22nd). A few are downloadable, which means, if you really wanted to, you could hide your laptop behind a pillow or something and buy it from there as everyone’s gathering around the tree. Please double-check with the seller before ordering to make sure that nothing is out of stock or otherwise ineligible for expedited shipping!
1. Transmit FTP client, from Panic ($29.95).
2. Pixelmator image editing software ($59).
3. Flickr Pro one-year subscription, ($24.95).
4. Prints and gifts using photos from Flickr or elsewhere, from Snapfish (9 cents and up).
5. Free by Chris Anderson from Amazon ($21.59).
6. Data Flow: Visualizing Information in Graphic Design, from Amazon ($49.14).
7. The Double Shot Camera, from Photojojo ($45, including film).
8. Hypotrochoid Art Set, from Restoration Hardware ($7.99).
9. iPod shuffle, from Apple ($59 for 2GB).
1. Holga 35mm Camera, from Urban Outfitters ($48).
2. Mosaic Sun Cocktail Napkins, from Dwell Studio ($28).
3. Geometry Jotter, from Present & Correct ($10).
4. Stereographics: Graphics in New Dimensions, from Amazon ($26.37).
5. Monogram Candle, from Anthropologie ($14.95).
6. Five-minute Origami Set, from Japanistic ($10.50).
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A note: I’ve cross-posted both gift guides to my new self-hosted blog on thingsandthin.gs, which, for now, will focus on objects of interest from around the web. I’m not quite sure what this means for The H Line yet. We’ll all have to wait until the next post to find out. In the meantime, please keep an eye on thingsandthin.gs and add it to your reader.
I’m somewhat of a digital pack rat, collecting shiny objects that come through my reader, Twitter stream, and elsewhere. So it’s no surprise that when I set out to compile a collection of gift recommendations, I ended up with about 60 items. I’ll spare you the full list, but will post at least one more edition this month. There’s just too much good stuff out there.
Everything is under $75. Most are $20-40. Some are $10 or less. Almost all are from small businesses or independent sellers.
1. A4 t-shirt, from Little Factory ($30).
2. Cubic Switchplate, from Design Glut ($8).
3. Blue Mountain pillow by lepetitoiseau, from Envelop ($34.49).
4. My Documents laptop bag, from Yanko Design ($30).
5. WESC Bongo headphones, from Revolve Clothing ($47).
6. Grid-It Grey, from Flight 001 ($22).
1. Suzette necklace by honey&stone, from Supermarket ($65).
2. The White Wolf by Sarah McNeil, from Print Society ($22).
3. Let’s Go For a Walk pillow by mrs eliot books, from Envelop ($34.49).
4. Feather ornament by roost, from Rare Device ($10).
5. Cats Let Nothing Darken Their Roar 2010 calendar ($32).
6. Serif tote bag, from Little Factory ($24).
I don’t remember much about my navigation through the net in 2003, but I can recall playing the puzzle game Samorost with unusual clarity. Its mood really resonated with me at the time, and I was amazed by the complexity and originality of the problem-solving methods it presented.
Now its creator has released Machinarium, which is just as engaging, challenging, and curious.
If you want to play the demo, be sure to set aside some stress-free time. Concentration is required.
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Descriptions of the 2010 Independent Games Festival submissions are up now!
(Side note: You see that attractive young man accepting his award in the promos on the home page? That’s my amazing boyfriend. <3)
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Here’s the new icon for my hard drive, from the Luckies set:
Via Emily Chang.
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I’ve been a mommy blogger addict off and on since 2004. At the moment, this is manifesting itself in frequent visits to Momversation, which hosts video conversations between mommy bloggers of note.
Among them is Dooce (Heather Armstrong), who has indirectly inspired me to talk about blogging in my undergraduate thesis, and even apply for my job at Automattic. Her honest use of the medium and subsequent success keep me passionate about the power of blogging.
I’m particularly in awe of her ability to be open about her experience with mental illness. The Momversation episode on depression (featuring another fave, Alice Bradley from Finslippy) is here.
You can find many others that are upbeat and funny in the episodes list.
“Annan Sort” by Bröderna Lindgren, featuring Britta Persson.
I’ll admit that I’m partial to this one because it’s the first Swedish song I could understand in (tiny) part on the first listen. It’s also adorable. If you dig this, check out Lindgren’s album Vuxen Barnmusik!, which can be translated as something like Grown-Up Kids’ Music! It’s available here for $19.
Via Fluxblog.
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The work of Flickr user Mark.Weaver, available for purchase in his Etsy store.
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This interview with my buddy Casey Pugh, all-around awesome dude and brain behind “Star Wars: Uncut,” a crowdsourced remake of the original. Check out the trailer:
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Google Maps API hacks by Flickr user Scloopy. This one is “Road Trips to LA”:
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“Come Out, Come Out” by I’m Totally Destroying It, powerpop from Chapel Hill. I’m not a fan of their other songs, but this one is infectiously happy. They also have a damn good band name.
Via The Yellow Stereo.
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My 26th birthday was earlier this month, and it’s made me feel unreasonably old. My body’s not on my side anymore, and neither are the rates of train tickets in Sweden. Sad. But this blog helps me appreciate my more-than-quarter-of-a-century on earth…
Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By, available as a book, too.
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This phone conversation with my mom about Halloween. There’s little doubt that she’s the source of my sense of humor:
Mom: “You know what I’m going to be disguised as?”
Me: “No, what?”
Mom: “The balloon boy.”
Me: “Ha! How are you going to do that?”
Mom: “Hide in the garage.”
Kremen sold sex.com for $12 million. In between fighting for sex.com, he had the time to found match.com. Which, I’d guess, has led to exponentially more actual sex
Plus ten other Internet firsts.
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The music of Bear in Heaven, and associated images.
“Lovesick Teenagers” – Bears in Heaven
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Muji Charcoal Lined Notebooks, size A5.
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Agatha Ruiz de la Prada, whose work is awesome on both the wearable and not-so-wearable sides.
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The Youth Care Foundation in Stockholm recently investigated social net use among young girls, and discovered that their obsession with checking messages and playing games on sites like Facebook is much more serious than expected. Here’s a roughly translated excerpt from this article in Swedish paper, Metro:
Even schoolwork seems to suffer. The girls choose to skip school to, for example, tend to their farms in “Farmville.”
Despite the fact that FarmVille is essentially a dumbed-down, much more boring version of good ol’ SimFarm, it’s already attracted more than 11 million active users (myself among them), which is on par with Warcraft. According to the Foundation, the consequences for seriously addicted users are comparable, too.
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Readernaut, which has the best interface of any of the other social book sites I’ve tried. One of my favorites features allows you to track your progress by pages, chapters, or Kindle locations.
At the moment, I’m reading Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative by Ken Robinson. It’s a great read about much more than the title implies. Trends in technology, education and economics are all in there too, explained simply and engagingly. If you’re interested, check out Robinson’s TED Talk for a taste. Brilliant stuff.
Next weekend the boy and I are packing up the last of his stuff in Skövde and moving it a couple hours west to our new sublet in Gothenburg. It’s a gorgeous place on the highest floor in an apartment building on one of the highest hills in the city — the kind the bus has trouble climbing. The apartment is lovely and has a balcony with a view that keeps me constantly grateful for all we have.
After we found out we got the place, I started thinking about all the cities and spaces I’ve lived in. A while back I created a map of the major moves, but I’d never quantified the places I’ve lived in each city. It seemed like the perfect time to do the math.
Here, without exaggeration, is a summary of where I’ve lived since birth:
Goshen, IN: 5 years, 2 residences
Falls Church, VA: 2 years, 1 residence
Indianapolis, IN: 2 years, 2 residences
Jakarta, Indonesia: 1 year, 1 residence
Naples, FL: 8 years, 3 residences
Sarasota, FL: 5 years, 7 residences
Brooklyn, NY: 1 year, 3 residences
San Francisco Bay Area, CA: 1 year, 7 residences
Skövde, Sweden: 3 months, 1 residence
Gothenburg, Sweden: 12 days, 1 residence
That’s 28 residences in 10 cities, in a span of 25 years.
I should note, too, that “residence” has had a lot of meanings in that time. I’ve lived in houses, apartments, rooms, dorms, a townhouse, my grandma’s house, a friend’s couch, a friend’s floor. It’s been utterly exhausting, but I know the list is nowhere near done. I can never predict what’s coming next, so I’ve stopped trying. Mystery is more fun, anyway. Maybe it’ll be a boat. Or a yurt. I’ll let you know when it happens. Until then, this is home.
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Some Favorites
Bye Bye Bicycle, a Swedish band on fledging label Bonjour Recordings (which they also happen to own). We had a lot of fun at the release party for their new album, Compass.
“Navigation” – Bye Bye Bicycle
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Bolagret, a nice alternative to IKEA.
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The Psychology of Achievements and Trophies, originally covered on Gamasutra, and interpreted through the lens of web design on Adaptive Path. Really, this sort of thinking can be applied to just about any industry that deals with large groups of people. We could all stand to consider how to “expand emotional space.”
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ThreeFrames.net, a blog of three-frame animated gifs from movies.
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The work of photographer and designer Paul Octavious, aka Dunny on Flickr.
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The women’s tall section of TopShop. I visited their Oxford Street store while on a recent trip to London and grabbed a pair of jeans with a 36″ inseam (!!!). It was a dream come true for this giant.
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“Why do CAPITAL LETTERS so annoy us?” from BBC News Magazine. It gives the matter a little historical and psychological context.
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The work of artist Carrie Schneider, who I find generally captivating and inspiring.
Work by Michael Dotson
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Miranda July interviewed by a slew of amazing people that I look up to. Among them: Cindy Sherman, Lorrie Moore, Joanna Newsom (yes, there are boys in there, too).
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“Make Something Cool Every Day” by Flickr user Laserbread, who works in diverse media.
A favorite is the FFFFOUND logo, redesigned to look lame:
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Remember when we used to blog openly about life experiences and feelings? I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. Apparently, so has Merlin Mann, thinker and internet funny guy of great repute (and graduate of my alma mater). Read his excellent piece, “Making the Clackity Noise.”
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David Sedaris’ thoughts on writing, healthcare, canned clams and more.
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jpeg a day, a nice visual respite for your reader.
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“Brain Is a Co-Conspirator in a Vicious Stress Loop” from The New York Times.
… chronically stressed rats lost their elastic rat cunning and instead fell back on familiar routines and rote responses, like compulsively pressing a bar for food pellets they had no intention of eating.
All too often, I’m one of those rats.
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News from the BBC: “Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year.”
More than a month after my “Hi from Sweden” post, I’m still here, and I plan to stick around.
All I can say is that you just don’t walk away from something like this — this love, this country, this opportunity to learn in so many ways. I have nothing tying me to the States (apartment agreement is up, my few belongings are in a friend’s boyfriend’s basement, I work remotely for Automattic) — an extremely lucky circumstance for which I’m grateful every day. I miss certain places and people, but the ones who get me the most understand that it’s worth suffering through the separation. So worth it.
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Books and magazines in English are rare here, and I never imagined that I’d miss them quite so much. Any bookstore with English titles is an incredible find. One treasure is the bookstore in the Konstmuseum in Gothenburg, where I found an old favorite I’d forgotten about:
Esopus magazine, a wonderful work of art somewhat similar to Cabinet (mentioned here), but more substantial. Most impressively, it’s edited by one man, Tod Lippy, who founded it on his own in 2003.
While heading to line for my purchase, I remembered that in 2006, after reading this article in the New York Times, I had written to Lippy, asking if he needed an editorial assistant (unsolicited). It was my senior year in college, and I was in full resume-sending mode.
After returning home, curious, I looked back through my Gmail archives to find the stiff, overly formal letter that I’d sent, and Lippy’s brief but kind reply (a negative, understandably).
Mr. Lippy, if you’re out there, thanks for the response.
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But Does it Float, a blog full of curious images like the one below, with quotes to match.
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Brits on TV: Hustle, a series about a group of London grifters pulling long cons, and Darren Brown: Mind Control, a showcase of feats of mental influence, memory, hypnotism and magic. Between these two, you could teach yourself how to get away with some serious stunts, were you so inclined.
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Tiny Sketch, a competition sponsored by Rhizome and OpenProcessing. Make the best Processing sketch in under 200 characters and $200 is yours.
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“A Farewell to Harms,” a piece from The Wall Street Journal lamenting the effects of the self-esteem moment, with Palin as proof.
“For 30 years the self-esteem movement told the young they’re perfect in every way. It’s yielding something new in history: an entire generation with no proper sense of inadequacy.”
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Linos, a sexy, portable, USB-powered record player (still a prototype, it seems).
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“Gimme Shelter.” Ashley Womble shares her account of living with her schizophrenic brother in this personal essay from The Morning News.
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The work of Aissa Logerot, including lampad’air, a light with variable volume, and Halo, a hand-powered LED in spraycan form.
I’ve been in Sweden since June 16 and will be here for a while longer (no return date yet). I’m staying in Skövde, which 1) Is somewhere between Gothenburg and Stockholm, and 2) Is pronounced with an “H” sound at the beginning instead of “Sk” (WHAT?).
This was planned as a five-day vacation, but has become an extended stay. It’s a very different trip than I set out on — and that’s an unquestionably good thing. I’m able to work remotely while I’m here, and there’s someone *amazing* around to keep me company.
If you know of awesome things to do in Sweden or nearby over the next few weeks, or awesome people I should meet (maybe you?), then please leave a comment and let me know!
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Some Favorites
This portrait by Flickr user JordiGual.
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Things Magazine, an old favorite that I’ve been paying new attention to. It’s an excellent source for almost anything that could interest a person with interests (with a bit of focus on architecture and design), presented in a seemingly non sequitor format, which is part of why it’s so wonderful.
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The Ora Unica (Single Hour) watch by Denis Guidone
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Two architecture/design blogs recently added to the reader: MinusFive and CoolBoom.
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A reliable way to keep a U.S. citizen abroad feeling comfortable and entertained: This American Life.
Some of the best episodes are from the live shows they do on stage, like this one and this one. I also love the Turncoat episode, not because it’s funny, but because the second act is about an informant (which always intrigues me) and deals with events surrounding the Katrina disaster, which still makes me ache and nearly cry from anger and sadness, four years later.
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The Infinite Summer challenge, sponsored by friends and mentors at The Morning News.
You have until September 22 to read all 1,000 pages of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. GO!
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The funny and eerie paintings of Scott Listfield:
(via BOOOOOOOM!)
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Cabinet, a quarterly magazine, which I used to buy with glee whenever I happened across one back in Florida. The unpredictable breadth of its articles and beautiful, often mysterious inserts makes it feel like you’re opening a treasure box rather than a magazine. This month’s theme is Deceit.
I’m so pleased to say that the very first Chromatic design meetup was a success! More than 40 people attended and provided feedback on a total of 10 sessions on two tracks — many of which were last-minute sign-ups at the door (which we highly encourage and appreciate!).
We learned a lot from this event, and have taken copious notes on how to make Chromatic II even better: more keynotes, more breaks between sessions so you can mingle, self-organize discussions or just relax, plus lots of other ideas contributed by attendees.
The date for the second Chromatic is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, August 15. Keep an eye on the wiki for updates!
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Here’s the transcript of my ten-minute talk, “Watching the Wall: Dealing with Unexpected User Innovation” (edited for blogworthiness). You’ll have to excuse the lack of images. For now, please use your imagination.
read more…
